LESBIAN RADIO INTERVIEWS: LIZA COWAN, SHARON BRIDGFORTH, MARTHA NELL SMITH

(Liza Cowan, self-portrait with scarf, © 2008)

Merry Gangemi produces and hosts a weekly radio show, Woman-Stirred Radio, that broadcasts every Thursday, from 4-6 p.m. EST on WGDR 91.1 FM (Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont). Her next show, this Thursday, May 15, will feature our beloved Liza Cowan. If you go to the Woman-Stirred website at the correct time, you should be able to listen to it live-streamed by clicking on the link in the left-hand column. It's also available via the WGDR website above.


However, if you miss it, I'm hoping it will appear as one of the podcasts offered by WOW, Women's World. Currently their podcasts include two other must-hear interviews I want to promote immediately. You may listen to both by clicking on the embeds below.

One of my mentors and premier African-American writer in the U.S. today, Sharon Bridgforth, is interviewed. Sharon has broken ground in the creation and presentation of the performance/novel and in doing so has advanced the articulation of the Jazz aesthetic as it lives in theater. She's won the Lambda literary award, has published her Bull-Jean Stories and Love Conjure Blues (both with Redbone Press), and if you are a reader of my novel Ginny Bates, you'll know she is the hero of both Allie and Myra.



Dickinson scholar Martha Nell Smith talks about Open Me Carefully, a work of uncensored letters and poems between Emily Dickinson and her friend, confidant, and sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson. I've referred to Martha Nell Smith in at least two of my posts:

Emily Dickinson, 10 December 1830 - 15 May 1886
As I Read My Emily Dickinson

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FEMINISM UNADULTERATED: THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF EDWARD THE DYKE

(Quenched, photo by Jill Posener)

In her introductory essay to the anthology True to Life Adventure Stories, Judy Grahn wrote the often-quoted:

"I have given a good deal of thought to the origins of folk English, to women and English, to the King's English, and to the phrase, 'murdering the King's English'. Murdering the King's English can be a crime only if you identify with the King."

Grahn's emphasis on reclaiming, valuing, publishing, and emulating the speech of common women, poor women, working women, women who use other than white "standard" English, permanently altered the landscape of American writing, not only feminist writing. Riding the same wave are/were Nora Zeale Hurston, Agnes Smedley, Alice Walker, Tillie Olson, Sharon Isabell, Irene Klepfisz, Dorothy Allison, Cherrie Moraga, Meridel LeSueur, Alta, Pat Parker, and other women who understood that "refusing to identify with the King" was an essential step in broadcasting the thoughts and lives of women in a patriarchy.


The first book published by Grahn was Edward the Dyke and Other Poems, a title which is itself ironic and rebellious. The main work within in, "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke" is not actually a poem. Written in 1964, it is a staggeringly early and taunting rejection of what, fourteen years later, Adrienne Rich would name as "compulsory heterosexuality".

In 1985, Grahn published Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. According to Martha Nell Smith in her article on Lesbian Poetry:

'Dedicating her study "To All Lovers" (not exclusively lesbian lovers), Grahn clearly states her objective: "The story I am telling is of the re-emergence of the public Lesbian voice."

'Claiming that poetry is especially important to women, Grahn makes the even more controversial claim that it is a vital "tool for survival" for lesbians and says that "more than one Lesbian has been kept from floundering on the rocks of alienation from her own culture, her own center, by having access, at least, to Lesbian poetry."

'Immediately she remarks the indisputable fact that "We owe a great deal to poetry; two of our most important names, for instance: Lesbian and Sapphic," effectively arguing the case for a study focused on lesbian poetry.'

....

'Of Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking To Death," [Elly] Bulkin wrote:
"That's a fact," Grahn keeps observing as she builds image after image of women ignored, derided, abused. The central 'fact' of the poem is finally the poet's own lesbianism. In a society that perceives lesbians as committing 'indecent acts' and that leers at women who kiss each other, who call each other 'lovers,' who admit to "wanting" another woman, Grahn forces a rethinking of both language and the assumptions behind it.

'Remarking that the "rhetorical drive" of Grahn's poetry draws on biblical and protesting oral traditions, Bulkin concludes that "this oral quality" underscores the "sense that the poem should be heard with others, not read by oneself." This is not a poetry for private pleasure only but a poetry of motivation meant to act as a force to change the world.'

Bulkin goes on to state in her 1978 essay ''Kissing/Against the Light': A Look at Lesbian Poetry":

'Uncovering a poetic tradition representative of lesbians of color and poor and working-class lesbians of all races involves, as Barbara Noda has written, reexamining "the words 'lesbian,' 'historical,' and even 'poet.'" A beginning problem is definitional, as Paula Gunn Allen makes clear in her exploration of her own American Indian culture:

It is not known if those
who warred and hunted on the plains
chanted and hexed in the hills
divined and healed in the mountains
gazed and walked beneath the seas
were Lesbians
It is never known
if any woman was a lesbian'

(It is worth noting here that Paula Gunn Allen and Judy Grahn were partners for many years.)




From my own experience, I recall having a copy of Edward the Dyke by 1975. That summer, there was no lesbian and gay pride event within several hours' drive of the small North Texas city where I lived with my lover and our five-year-old daughter. However, we heard that on Saturday, gay men and perhaps some lesbians would be gathering at Queen's Point, a beach on nearby Lake Dallas notorious as a locale for cruising and clandestine same-sex partying.

It was still very dangerous to go to known gay places in public, especially in daylight. You could be arrested simply for being there. My lover was a schoolteacher already under custody fears from her fundamentalist parents. Nevertheless, we resolved to go. We were that hungry for community.

We decided to take things one step further: We would contribute to the day's festivities. We memorized "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke", assigning the characters to my lover (narrator), Dr. Knox (our gay friend Billie Bledsoe), and Edward the Dyke (me). We performed this on the beach, before a crowd of drag queens, college fags, and cruisers from Dallas looking for pick-ups. We were the only women there.

I can recall clearly my voice waxing lyrical on the lines "Oh Bach, oh Brahms, oh Buxtehude", and Billie shouting at me "Admit you have a smegmatic personality". I can also recall that we got not a single laugh. It went completely over their heads, a crushing failure to connect.

Yet when we later reprised it for an entirely straight, mostly married crowd of women from NOW, we killed. After that, I put all my energy in women's and lesbian community efforts, not gay or queer. I wanted to begin with a common language.

After the fold is the text of "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke". Below is a bibliography of Judy Grahn's work. Also immediately below is the first paragraph of an extraordinary essay by Judy Grahn (now Ph.D.) at her website Metaformia, entitled Are Wars Metaformic?. This is intended to whet your appetite and send you to the link so you can keep reading the ongoing work of this major leader/thinker/writer.

"Mass warfare is not sustainable, is not noble, and is not between warriors. Civilian deaths far outnumber those of soldiers; terrified and furious soldiers go mad in war and murder civilians, and many ex-soldiers never recover from the traumas—physical, psychological, and social—of modern warfare. War is addictive and attractive because it appears to be about meaning, but it is actually about sensation and loyalty, grotesquely out of balance emotions of the people who endure it, and grotesquely out of balance power urges of the men who decree it to happen. Yet, the bloodshed of war is glorified above all other bloodshed."

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JUDY GRAHN

—Edward The Dyke and Other Poems. Oakland, CA: The Women’s Press Collective, 1971.
—A Woman is Talking to Death. Oakland, CA: The Women’s Press Collective, 1974.
—She Who: a graphic book of poems with 54 images of women. Oakland, CA: Diana Press, 1977.
—The Works of a Common Woman. Oakland, CA: The Women’s Press Collective, 1978.
—The Queen of Wands. Ithaca, NY: The Crossing Press, 1982.
—Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
—Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. Spinsters Ink, 1985.
—The Queen of Swords. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.
—Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with Essays by Judy Grahn. Ithaca, NY: Crossing Press, 1990.
-Mundane's World, A Novel, Ithaca, NY: The Crossing Press, 1988
—Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.



THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF EDWARD THE DYKE

© by Judy Grahn (published in Edward the Dyke and Other Poems, 1971, Women's Press Collective)

Behind the brown door which bore the gilt letters of Dr. Merlin Knox's name, Edward the Dyke was lying on the doctor's couch which was so luxurious and long that her feet did not even hang over the edge.

"Dr. Knox," Edward began, "my problem this week is chiefly concerning restrooms."

"Aahh," the good doctor sighed. Gravely he drew a quick sketch of a restroom in his notebook.

"Naturally I can't go into men's restrooms without feeling like an interloper, but on the other hand every time I try to use the ladies room I get into trouble."

"Umm," said Dr. Knox, drawing a quick sketch of a door marked 'Ladies'.

"Four days ago I went into the powder room of a department store and three middle-aged housewives came in and thought I was a man. As soon as I explained to them that I was really only a harmless dyke, the trouble began..."

"You compulsively attacked them."

"Oh heavens no, indeed not. One of them turned on the water faucet and tried to drown me with wet paper towels, but the other two began screaming something about how well did I know Gertrude Stein and what sort of underwear did I have on, and they took my new cuff links and socks for souvenirs. They had my head in the trash can and were cutting pieces off my shirttail when luckily a policeman heard my calls for help and rushed in. He was able to divert their attention by shooting at me, thus giving me a chance to escape through the window."

Carefully Dr. Knox noted in his notebook: 'Apparent suicide attempt after accosting girls in restroom.' "My child," he murmured in feathery tones, "have no fear. You must trust us. We will cure you of this deadly affliction, and before you know it you'll be all fluffy and wonderful with dear babies and a bridge club of your very own." He drew a quick sketch of a bridge club. "Now let me see. I believe we estimated that after only four years of intensive therapy and two years of anti-intensive therapy, plus a few minor physical changes and you'll be exactly the little girl we've always wanted you to be." Rapidly Dr. Knox thumbed through an index on his desk. "Yes yes. This year the normal cup size is 56 inches. And waist 12 and 1/2. Nothing a few well-placed hormones can't accomplish in these advanced times. How tall did you tell me you were?"

"Six feet, four inches," replied Edward.

"Oh, tsk tsk." Dr. Knox did some figuring. "Yes, I'm afraid that will definitely entail extracting approximately 8 inches from each leg, including the knee-cap...standing a lot doesn't bother you, does it my dear?"

"Uh," said Edward, who couldn't decide.

"I assure you the surgeon I have in mind for you is remarkably successful." He leaned far back in his chair. "Now tell me, briefly, what the word 'homosexuality means to you, in your own words."

"Love flowers pearl, of delighted arms. Warm and water. Melting of vanilla wafer in the pants. Pink petal roses trembling overdew on the lips, soft and juicy fruit. No teeth. No nasty spit. Lips chewing oysters without grimy sand or whiskers. Pastry. Gingerbread. Warm, sweet bread. Cinnamon toast poetry. Justice equality higher wages. Independent angel song. It means I can do what I want."

"Now my dear," Dr. Knox said, "Your disease has gotten completely out of control. We scientists know of course that it's a highly pleasurable experience to take someone's penis or vagina into your mouth - it's pleasurable and enjoyable. Everyone knows that. But after you've taken a thousand pleasurable penises or vaginas into your mouth and had a thousand people take your pleasurable penis or vagina into their mouth, what have you accomplished? What have you got to show for it? Do you have a wife or children or a husband or a home or a trip to Europe? Do you have a bridge club to show for it? No! You have only a thousand pleasurable experiences to show for it. Do you see how you're missing the meaning of life? How sordid and depraved are these clandestine sexual escapades in parks and restrooms? I ask you."

"But sir but sir," said Edward, "I'm a woman. I don't have sexual escapades in parks or restrooms. I don't have a thousand lovers - I have one lover."

"Yes yes." Dr. Knox flicked the ashes from his cigar, onto the floor. "Stick to the subject, my dear."

"We were in college then," Edward said. "She came to me out of the silky midnight mist, her slips rustling like cow thieves, her hair blowing in the wind like Gabriel. Lying in my arms harps played soft in dry firelight, Oh Bach. Oh Brahms. Oh Buxtehude. How sweetly we got along how well we got the woods pregnant with canaries and parakeets, barefoot in the grass alas pigeons, but it only lasted ten years and she was gone, poof! like a puff of wheat."

"You see the folly of these brief, physical embraces. But tell me the results of our experiment we arranged for your last session."

"Oh yes. My real date. Well I bought a dress and a wig and a girdle and a squeezy bodice. I did unspeakable things to my armpits with a razor. I had my hair done and my face done and my nails done. My roast done. My bellybutton done."

"And then you felt truly feminine."

"I felt truly immobilized. I could no longer run, walk bend stoop move my arms or spread my feet apart."

"Good, good."

"Well, everything went pretty well during dinner, except my date was only 5'3" and oh yes. One of my eyelashes fell into the soup - that wasn't too bad. I hardly noticed it going down. But then my other eyelash fell on my escort's sleeve and he spent five minutes trying to kill it."

Edward sighed. "But the worst part came when we stood up to go. I rocked back on my heels as I pushed my chair back under the table and my shoes - you see they were three inchers, raising me to 6'7", and with all my weight on those teeny little heels..."

"Yes, yes."

"I drove the spikes all the way into the thick carpet and could no longer move. Oh, everyone was nice about it. My escort offered to get the check and to call in the morning to see how I had made out and the manager found a little saw and all. But, Dr. Knox, you must understand that my underwear was terribly binding and the room was hot..."

"Yes, yes."

"So I fainted. I didn't mean to, I just did. That's how I got my ankles broken."

Dr. Knox cleared his throat. "It's obvious to me, young lady, that you have failed to control your P.E."

"My God," said Edward, glancing quickly at her crotch, "I took a bath just before I came."

"This oral eroticism of yours is definitely rooted in Penis Envy, which showed when you deliberately castrated your date by publicly embarrassing him."

Edward moaned. "But strawberries. But lemon cream pie."

"Narcissism," Dr. Knox droned, "Masochism, Sadism. Admit you want to kill your mother."

"Marshmallow bluebird," Edward groaned, eyes softly rolling. "Looking at the stars. April in May."

"Admit you want to possess your father. Mother substitute. Breast suckle."

"Graham cracker subway," Edward writhed, slobbering. "Pussy willow summer."

"Admit you have a smegmatic personality," Dr. Knox intoned.

Edward rolled to the floor. "I am vile! I am vile!"

Dr. Knox flipped a switch at his elbow and immediately a picture of a beautiful woman appeared on a screen over Edward's head. The doctor pressed another switch and electric shocks jolted through her spine. Edward screamed. He pressed another switch, stopping the flow of electricity. Another switch and a photo of a gigantic erect male organ flashed into view, coated in powdered sugar. Dr. Knox handed Edward a lollipop.

She sat up. "I'm saved," she said, tonguing the lollipop.

"Your time is up," Dr. Knox said. "Your check please. Come back next week."

"Yes sir yes sir,” Edward said as she went out the brown door. In his notebook, Dr. Knox made a quick sketch of his bank.

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EMILY DICKINSON, 10 DECEMBER 1830 - 15 MAY 1886

(Authenticated Emily Dickinson daguerrotype circa 1846 and likely newly-discovered Emily Dickinson photo circa 1856)

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born 177 years ago today and lived 56 years (two Saturn cycles). During her lifetime, she wrote a known 1775 poems, of which only seven were published. Her work was not understood for what it is, and it is for this reason that she appears to have retreated from the idea of publication. After her death, her poetry was discovered and atrociously edited into a series of volumes which increasingly established her as a singular American voice despite the revision of her style. It was only in 1955, the year I was born, that the first somewhat authentic version of her poetry was published. The understanding of her genius continues to grow as the originals of her poems and letters, mutilated as they have been by editors (often physically so), come to scholarly scrutiny and public readership.

She began writing seriously in her 20s, during the late 1840s, after exposure to higher education and a strong social life with other women. Her production reached fever pitch during the 1850s and continued through the years of the Civil War, but declined somewhat after 1865 when she was advised by an eye specialist to stop reading and writing (she did not stop, fortunately.) Even if you average her production over 40 years, it comes to 45 poems a year or almost a poem a week. As a poet myself, I would consider that a respectable output even if I were not of the calibre of Emily Dickinson and inventing a new style of writing as I went along. The reality, however, is that her writing pace was often much more intense, and that's only if you consider the primary construction, not the continuous discussion and rewrite she undertook of her own work. She was a career writer, by any definition of the term.

She was better known and highly respected in her time as a gardener -- really, a horticulturalist. In addition to this activity, and her writing, she also ran her father's household which was in itself a full-time job. She had enough class, race and cultural advantage to keep her from worse manual labor, but not enough to allow her escape from a heavy housework burden. It's no wonder that so many of her poems begin on scraps of paper used for other purposes and shoved into her apron pocket. She did not have the leisure to sit down and write when the muse struck.

This may help explain her style, her short lines and stanzas, the condensation of meaning and ellipsis that make her work instantly recognizable. She was definitely writing for a public, however imaginary. But she also wrote for her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, who lived next door with her brother Austin and was her daily advisor and critic.

(Susan Gilbert circa 1856)

Since her death, those who write about Emily Dickinson have gone through outrageous contortions trying to name who was the object of her passionate love poems. Even now, Serious White Men of Letters pee on themselves when anyone implies she was clearly fixated on her Susie. It simply cannot be that the greatest American female poet was, well, her generation's version of a dyke. No, it has to be some bewhiskered old fart she wrote a letter to once, or saw across the commons, or whatever.

Here's what can be documented:

Emily's greatest outpouring of poetry occurred around the time she met and got close to Susan, then lost her to her brother Austin. Indeed, Emily's body of poetry coincides temporally with her 40-year relationship with Susan.

In at least one of her letters, Emily states flatly she is in competition with her brother for the courting of Susan.

Austin Dickinson had a long, scandalous affair with Mabel Loomis Todd which he claimed was justified because of Susan's "marital coldness" toward him.

Emily wrote over 300 letters to Susan, more than any other correspondent.

Susan entertained every editor who published Emily's poems during her lifetime, and there is strong evidence that Susan was responsible for passing Emily's poetry along to editors.

Susan Dickinson was as well-read as Emily -- indeed, they shared books and influences between themselves. They were equally passionate about music and nature, and Susan was an intellectual. She was also a critical and prolific writer herself, producing poetry, essays, reviews, published stories and voluminous correspondence.

Susan's letters to Emily, which she had reclaimed after Emily passed away, were destroyed after her death by Mabel Loomis Todd. Thus, we have only Emily's side of their correspondence, which is often overtly erotic and effusive.

In an 1860 letter-poem to Susan, Emily writes:
for the Woman
whom I prefer
Here is Festival -
When my Hands
are Cut, Her
fingers will be
found inside -

Most telling, the editing of Emily's work after her death by Mabel Loomis Todd amounts to pervasive and fanatical censorship focused on Susan Gilbert's presence in Emily's life. Not only are female pronouns changed to male, but far more telling, almost every reference to Susan is inked over, altered, or literally cut from the page. For details, read Martha Nell Smith's essay "Mutilations: What Was Erased, Inked Over and Cut Away". What on earth could they have been trying to conceal unless it was the nature of their relationship?

Along with the distortion and erasure of Emily Dickinson's relationship with the woman she referred to as her "Imagination" is the portrayal of her as agoraphobic and reclusive. The reality, revealed by her letters and journals, is that visitors to her home were extremely frequent and no doubt time-consuming, but seldom discouraged. She was outside in her garden a great deal as well.

She did abstain from the endless cycle of social visits common to the era, which may in part have been because she found them tedious, but the best explanation for which is the simplest: Emily suffered from (and died of) what was then called "Bright's disease", a form of nephritis that was progressive in her case. Symptoms common to this illness include profound edema to such an extent that breathing is impaired (imagine trying to put on that era's restrictive women's garments for out-of-the-house-wear in such circumstances), back pain, vomiting, fever, and the need for frequent urination. No wonder she stuck close to home. The fact is, she was heroic in all that she managed to accomplished with this burden.

For accurate and open-minded examination of Emily Dickinson's life and work, I recommend the Dickinson Electronic Archive, which allows us the rare opportunity to see digitized copies of Emily's poems as she wrote them. The executive editor of this site is Martha Nell Smith, who wrote the definitive books Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson and Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, among others. Bartleby also has online the 1924 edition of Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems, although in fact these are only 597 in number and repeat many of the egregious editing errors (especially alteration of pronouns) found in earlier volumes of her work.

A few years ago, I wrote a short story about an homage journey I made to Emily's home ground. I close with this.

THE MUFFDIVERS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE TOUR

After forty, good Christmases are often hard to come by. In 2001, Zerra lost her favorite aunts, her oldest friend, the best cat ever, and then her little brother in a streak of incomprehensible death. She lost the ability to walk and consented to losing her left knee, replaced by a titanium and plastic arrangement that did not quite work. She lost her job and then, perhaps inevitably, her girlfriend. By November she was too crippled and numb to do herself in. Well, the truth was, she had made a promise that suicide would not be an option No Matter What. Still, testing her resolve this way was a stupid move on god's part.

At Thanksgiving she realized she had no one to spend Christmas with and no money to go anywhere. But on December 1st, two good friends, a lesbian couple in Boston, called her to say Come have Christmas here. We're sending you a ticket. She said yes, of course. They knew.

This is one year post 9/11, and the day she flies into Logan is the same day some guy on a flight out of Boston tries to set off explosives in his sneakers. When she arrives, Logan has or less come unhinged. But her competent friends, one a Harvard professor and the other director of the Jewish Film Festival, smoothly extricate her with a wheelchair and big smiles. They go to a falafel joint (not as good as California, she thinks) and over the meal, they discuss what to do with their holiday. There, within sight of the Old North Church, they hatch the first Muffdivers of American Literature Tour. Day one will be ESVM, or Vincent, as she preferred to sign her letters. Camden, Maine is within driving range. Day Two will be Emily of course. Day Three they stretch the parameters a little bit to decide on Salem and witchburning. That is enough to begin with.

The next morning three fat women and a four-pronged aluminum cane squeeze into Shelly's Honda and head north. They drive by the headquarters of Land's End. They drive through a small town with its frozen pond crowded by bundled-up kids playing hockey with much more energy than grace. They stop at Moody's Diner where her vegetarian friends have issue with the menu, but there are always potatoes to fall back on. Zerra has scallops fresh and buttery, followed by rhubarb cobbler. Tomorrow, she plans, chowdah and Boston Cream Pie. The parking lot is a sheet of ice, and her cane seems inadequate. It gets dark alarmingly fast. She thinks of the planet Winter that Ursula Leguin wrote about; if they were in Oregon, Ursula would be on the tour list, husband or no.

(Moody's Diner, Waldoboro, Maine)

Shelly was raised in New York and Miami. She drives with an aggression Zerra has forgotten after all her years in Texas, but recognizes from her sojourn in San Francisco. They tend to zoom past destinations and Shelly has to come back around. This is complicated by her enormous resistance to making left turns. By making a series of right turns, it's possible to avoid left turns altogether, and Shelly is of the mind that this is a preferred course. But Zerra is from Texas, patient and already thinking This will make a great story someday.

Maxine is from Pittsburgh and has only learned to drive in the last year. If Shelly is like this in Boston, well, there is no reckoning what Maxine's driving might be like.

When they reach Camden, Zerra cracks open her copy of Savage Beauty (she and Maxine have one each) and tries to come up with a Millay home address. Near the center of town is a Camden map posted on the wall of a bank, but, inconceivably, there is no mention among all the landmarks of anything to do with the first American woman to ever win a Pulitzer, home town girl who changed the face of poetry. There is a badly-cast statue of a forgotten military doofus, but nothing for Vincent. Finally Shelly finds a street just outside of town, leading down to the harbor, named Millay Road. Jackpot.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928)

Although it is a right turn, Shelly misses Millay Road and getting back to it takes fifteen minutes. It rapidly stops being paved and turns into frozen mud ruts. It also heads down at a rather sharp angle, which Shelly treats a little like a sled ride. The only houses on the road are at the beginning, and they are new-looking. Nothing like a Millay homestead. They find a place to turn around and head back up the hill. The car, however, is not cooperative. Two-thirds of the way up it falters and skids to a stop. For once Zerra wishes Shelly would be a little more aggressive, but her expertise on driving in winter conditions is limited to one season at the lesbian land collective in Colorado in 1977, so she keeps quiet.

Shelly decides to go far enough back to get a running start at the hill and pray there is no cross traffic at the crest as they shoot out onto level. By this time it is pitch dark. Shelly opts to let the car slide back, rather than put it in reverse down the hill. It begins sliding, not just backwards but also to the side of the road. Zerra's side. When it finally comes to a stop, it seems distressingly as if they are at the very edge of the road.

Shelly asks Zerra to have a looksee. Zerra opens her car door and leans out an inch. Directly below her is a ten-foot drop into a rocky ditch. Maxine in the back seat slides over and is trying to see out, too. Zerra waves her back into the middle of the car. She faces Shelly with what she hopes is a reassuring grin and says We've still got traction, but no more sliding in any direction, okay? Just gun it forward, you can do it, Shelly. Then she tests her seatbelt and takes a deep breath.

At that instant a knock on Shelly's window scares them all almost into unconsciousness. Shelly keeps her foot clamped on the brake as she rolls down the window. A burly young man with a frost-flecked beard say What are you doing? Shelly explains We are having trouble getting back up the hill. Then she asks brightly Do you know of anything on this road having to do with Edna St. Vincent Millay? He looks blank.

She tries again: If we turn right, will that lead us to Mount Battie? Zerra prays she would not go on to explain that Edna had written the first lines of "Renascence" inspired by the view from the top of Mount Battie. He pauses before replying The park and mountain are closed for the season. Then he says You're blocking the road, we need to leave soon, please get out of the way, and walks back toward one of the houses. Zerra thinks We sure are not in Texas.

Shelly guns it and they make it back to the main road. Shelly says she is willing to have a try at Mount Battie anyhow, maybe they could get past the barrier and go on to the top, it's not that icy. Zerra remembers the rocky ditch and says No thanks. As they drive back into Camden, around a bend they see the harbor and there are the "three islands in a bay". She cracks open Savage Beauty to the index and, using the light from the glove compartment, tries to find more addresses in Camden. The Millays were always moving. It reminds her of her own family, one trailer park after another. If Vince had been born in Texas during the 1950's, she'd have been trailer trash, too.

(View of Camden, Maine from Mount Battie showing part of "three islands in a bay")

The next address she digs up is no longer there, a skip in the numbers on the street where apparently someone has absorbed the lot to add on a skylighted wing. They drive up and down, trying to decide which buildings might have been there in Vince's time. At a long traffic light, she has enough time to come up with a third address, on the other side of town. But when they track it down, it's now a car wash.

Maxine says Let's stop anyhow, I need to stretch my legs. It's a right turn, so they pull in. Zerra says she wants something to commemorate their quest for Vince, something tangible. Maxine looks around the car wash, comes back with an orange cream soda from the coke machine. This is how Zerra's altar at home has come to hold the Edna St. Vincent Millay Memorial Car Wash Orange Cream Soda, next to a Virgen de Guadalupe candle.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay protesting proposed execution of Sacco and Vanzetti)

They go back to Somerville. Zerra takes Savage Beauty to bed with her, but it's too chilly to keep her hands outside the covers for reading.

The next morning, Maxine says it is her turn to drive. Shelly is a soft butch but too intellectual to admit she has trouble giving up the keys. She gets into the back seat with only a tiny sigh. Maxine turns out to be a wonderful driver. She and Zerra are talking like old times, going along at five mph under the speed limit, when Shelly interrupts to say This is way too fast for this neighborhood. It is, in fact, slower than she drove it yesterday, but whatever, Maxine eases off the accelerator.

A couple of minutes later, Shelly interrupts again: I don't want to spoil your fun, but you're not focusing on the road enough. Shelly has a full side view of Zerra's face, so Zerra can't roll her eyes at Maxine. They stop talking. After another minute, Shelly points to a car so far ahead of them that Zerra can't make out all of the license plate numbers and says ominously, Following distance...

Maxine puts on the turn signal, makes a deft left turn into a gas station. She gets out of the car and walks around to Zerra's side. Zerra grabs her four-pronged cane and gets out of the car as well. Maxine is trembling. Shelly has now gotten into the driver's seat. Maxine crawls in the back. Nobody has said a word. Zerra thinks Middle class. But she knows how to pass.

Back on the road, they pass a sign announcing Walden City Limits. Zerra interrupts Shelly's stream of chatter to ask if they can see Walden Pond. Maxine warns her that it is not what she might expect, it is almost as developed as where they are driving through.

When Zerra was a sophomore and her class was assigned Thoreau, it had gobsmacked her. She took down all decorations, even the curtains, from her tiny trailer bedroom. She stopped wearing make-up and stopped gossiping with her friends. On her notebook she wrote "Simplify, simplify." Years later she found out her mother had called her English teacher to talk it over. They decided it was just a phase, and a benign one at that. She really does want to see Walden Pond, in any permutation. But it's a left turn, and after a few minutes of trying to find a turnaround that Shelly can make while speeding, Zerra says Never mind.

It is Zerra's turn to choose the CD, so she slides in James Taylor's Greatest Hits, just for the pleasure of them all singing Well the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on accounta that frostin' while they were actually on the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston. Zerra once lived in a household with a dyke who had gone through high school with James Taylor and his siblings, Alex, Livingston, Kate. She said they were all pretty fucked up people. Zerra doesn't care, if she could ever write anything like "Sweet Baby James" or "Millworker", she would consider herself to have achieved muffdiver literary greatness.

Because they get to Northhampton early, they drive around the grounds of Smith. With the new snow, it is unbelievably beautiful. A rich girl's school, for sure. Zerra has arranged for them to have lunch with a Smith professor who interviewed her last year over the phone about her role in forming one of the first incest survivor groups in the country, back in 1980. They meet up at a vegetarian Japanese restaurant downtown. The professor is hilarious, the edamame was the best Zerra has ever tasted, and the conversation makes her feel really, really good about her life choices.

After lunch Shelly offers to drive by the neighborhood where Ravel, one of Zerra's exes, lives. Shelly knows her a little because they are in the same New England women's martial arts circle. At first Zerra says okay. But then she thinks it would be just her luck to have Ravel be standing outside and see her. The idea makes her clammy. So they go on toward Amherst.

On the way, Shelly and Maxine insist they stop at a place called Atkins Farm Stand. They say the doughnuts and apple fritters here are the best in all Western Mass. So far, Zerra is not that impressed with the New England version of doughnuts; to be honest, she prefers Krispy Kreme. But some kind of doughnut is better than none at all.

Zerra's metal knee is starting to throb, so she waits in the car. She asks them to get her those little log cabins of maple syrup. She also says I would like to have something to leave at Emily Dickinson's grave, perhaps a libation -- if you find anything appropriate, grab it for me, okay? After they leave, she turns on the heater full blast. When they come back, they won't show her what they got for Emily: It's a surprise.

They reach Amherst at twilight. The town commons is strung with fairy lights, and a church at the end of the street is picture-postcard. Zerra has a map she pulled off the internet, but this town, at least, knows how to commemorate its famous women: Signs direct them to the Dickinson home. It is within sight of the commons, and dark. A big parking lot at the back no doubt covers up precious Emily-era garden, but the main herb garden and other growth going back into a woods are intact. There is a trail through it. Shelly and Maxine go walk it, while Zerra sits in the car, staring up at Emily's attic window. It is quiet as the grave -- no, wait, that's a line from Vincent.

(Emily Dickinson's bedroom)

The map is a vague about where the town cemetery is, but Zerra remembers reading that it is almost within sight of the Dickinson homestead. So they basically make the block, right, right, right again, and there's the entrance to the cemetery. A sign says it closes at sundown, and since it is full dark, Shelly puts on the brakes. But the gate is still open, and Zerra says Oh please, go in. It turns out to be much bigger than any of them expected. Zerra is a well-trained Southern country girl and knows her way around a graveyard; still, this is a lot of graveyard. Shelly asks what to do.

Zerra closes her eyes and says I will channel Emily. Drive really slow, I mean SLOW, creep, and I'll tell you where to go. Shelly puts the car in gear and there is a small crunch of gravel. Zerra opens her eyes every now and then to say Turn here. They are somewhere in the middle, a couple of minutes later, when Maxine says Uh----. Shelly stops, and they look where Maxine is pointing. A tall white headstone says "Edward Dickinson". That's her father says Zerra. She is scrambling to get out of the car, then remembers she can't scramble any more.

(Dickinson family plot, Amherst Cemetery, Massachusetts, photo by Linda Tate)

Emily's grave also has a tall white headstone, plain and gleaming in the moonlight. The family plot has a black metal fence around it, but the stones face the fence a few inches away, so they can read the inscriptions and they can, if they wish, touch the stones. A collection of small objects are arranged on the top rim of Emily's marker: A few shriveled flowers, a piece of colored glass, and a child's toy car.

Zerra finds she cannot speak. Her hands are shoved down deep into her coat pocket and she is shaking, not from the cold, she thinks. Behind her she hears the rustle of a paper bag. Maxine shows her what they bought at Atkins. It's a carton of carob soy milk. Oh, for god's sake. She lets Maxine open the carton and pour it on Emily's grave. Maybe they're right, maybe if Emily were alive today she'd be a vegan lesbian-feminist. Not such a stretch.

It is Christmas Eve. Zerra wishes she had the will to go into the church on the commons and attend service. Her relationship with Christianity no longer allows her this kind of slack. Instead, she reaches out her hand and places her palm flat over Emily's name on the headstone. The marble is shockingly cold, and she realizes the ground is probably that cold, too.

She bursts into tears. Emily has been dead so long. So many people she has loved have been dead for so long. Maxine moves up to press against Zerra's back but this just makes her cry harder. It's not enough, our time here is not enough, and Emily waited for something that never came. She wrote her heart out, and maybe that was enough; maybe it wasn't. Zerra promises to herself, silently and ferociously, to not give up. She will not wait for a letter from the world, she will not go into the cold willingly.


© 2007 Maggie Jochild

(Emily Dickinson's grave)

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